Skeletal remains with animal bone blades tied to the feet testify to skating’s existence as early as 10,000 BC. These remains were found in the Netherlands. Scandinavia is called the mother of skating because of the sport’s popularity there, beginning around 1000AD. Ice skating was primarily a means of transportation at first, although documents from the Netherlands indicate that speed races were held in towns as early as the 15th century.
American athlete Jackson Haines is known as the father of modem figure skating. Haines was born in 1840 in New York City. After studying dance and ballet, he became a dancing and applied his dancing techniques to figure skating. He performed around the world and became well known for his imaginative and artistic techniques. Haines’ s style was enthusiastically received in Europe and ually became accepted internationally.
The formation of national and international skating organizations began during the 1890s. In 1892 the International Skating Union (ISU) was established. Today the ISU defines the rules and sets performance standards for speed skating, figure skating, and ice dancing competitions. Also in the late 1800s the National Skating Association of the United States and the International Skating Union of America were founded. In 1921 national standards were set down for skating, and the United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) was formed to govern the sport in the United States, superseding the earlier organizations. Speed skating in the United States is governed by the United States International Speed Skating Association and the Speedskating Union of the United States, both of which are affiliated with the ISU.
The first official men’s world speed skating championships were held in 1893. Women’s world champion- snip speed skating s first took place ’in 1947. The first men’s world figure skating championships were held in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1896, and in 1906 the first women’s championships were held in Davos, Switzerland. Figure skating was included in the Summer Olympics of 1908 and 1920 and at the first Winter Olympics in 1924, where men’s speed skating s were also held. Women’s speed skating made its Olympic debut in the 1960 Olympic s. Ice dancing was added to Olympic competition in 1976, and short-track speed skating was first included in the 1988 s.
Norway’s Sonja Henie played a large role in popularizing figure skating during the 1920s and 1930s. On the strength of her athletic jumps, modem costumes, and inventive choreography she won gold medals at the Winter Olympic s in 1928, 1932, and 1936. Henie later skated in ice shows and in motion pictures, inspiring many people to take up skating. American skater Dick Button, a five-time world champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist, brought outstanding athleticism to skating. Along with inventing the flying camel sit spin, he was also the first skater to successfully complete a double axel and a triple jump in competition. In the
1970s Soviet pairs skaters Oleg and Ludmila Protopopov transformed pairs skating with their elegant, bailetlike movements. In the 1980s British ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean dominated competition with innovative routines that broke away from ice dancing traditions.
The development of modem speed skating is credited to Jaap Eden, a Dutch skater bom in 1873. He set a world record in 1894, completing a 5000-meter race in 8 minutes 37.6 seconds. Since then Eden’ s record has been broken many times and today the best skaters complete the same distance in a little over 6 minutes, primarily as a result of more sophisticated training methods. Other successful speed skaters include Eric Heiden of the United States, a three-time world champion who won five gold medals during the 1980 Winter Olympics; Norway’s Johann Olav Koss, who set three new world records during the 1994 Winter Olympics; and Dan Jansen of the United States, who dominated speed skating for more than ten years from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, capping his success with a gold medal and a world record in the 1000-meter long-track race at the 1994 Olympics. Successful female speed skaters include Germany’s Gunda Niemann, who won seven all- around world championship titles between 1991 and 1998, and Bonnie Blair of the United States, who won a total of five Olympic gold medals in the 1988, 1992, and 1994 Olympics. Blair was also the first woman to skate 500 meters in less than 39 seconds.
Who was the first skater to successfully complete a double axel and a triple jump in competition